KanCare Questions Persist

January of 2013, Kansas turned the management of its $3 billion Medicaid program over to three big, for-profit companies and renamed it KanCare.

At the time, Governor Sam Brownback said privatizing Medicaid would both reduce costs and improve the care provided to low-income, disabled and elderly Kansans. But as Jim McLean of the KHI News Service reports, more than a year after KanCare's launch, questions remain about how well it's working.

The state set a goal to have all claims without mistakes processed in 20 days and all claims processed in 60 days.

An August report from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said the state's three KanCare providers - Amerigroup, Sunflower Health and United Healthcare - failed to meet that benchmark in any month last year.